The united opinion. [volume] (Bradford, Vt.) 1881-1970, 1887-07-08

of the Labor Market-Struggles for a
Livelihood-The Rise and Prospects of a
Bright Young Chinese.
BosToN,. July G..
"How would you like to have your daugh-
ter marry Chinaman?'
That conundrum is to-day to be solved at
New Haven, to the happiness and pleasure
of all concerned, and perhaps just trife
of envy Oh the part of some young ladies
who are not SO directly concerned as they
individually might wish to be.
The contracting parties are Elizabeth
Maude Jerome, daughter Of Mrs. E. Gilbert
Jerome, and Yam Phou Lee / used to
know him as Lee Yam Phou, when he first
came to this country, but he has attempted
to Anglicize his name. 81
Yam Fhou Lee, halls from Frag-
rant Hills, China. He graduated at
Yale last week, and is one of the brightest of
the lads whom the Chinese government sent
over here few years ago to acquire a
knowledge of Caucasian civilization. They
were selected by competitive examination,
and were all SO smart that their progress in
the New England schools which they at
tended dazzled the native youth. The
Yankee who could keep pace in his studies
with these picked students was a prodigy
Yet the Chinese were chosen impartially
from rich and poor classes. Van Phou
Lee once told me something of his history
which he has elaborated in his book
"When was Boy in China" Though
coming of noble family, he has abandoned
his native country. One of the reasons he
gives for this act is that his relatives had
picked out wife for him and ordered him
to come back and marry her. As he was
received in good American society, was
popular with set of American girls, and
felt himself quite Yankee, he didn't
choose to accept the career his
kinsrnen had laid out for him.
He is confident of his ability to make his
way in this country in literary and allied
pursuits, and no doubt he will Those who
are familiar only with The washee- washee'
type of Chinese can form no notion of what
the smarter Chinese are, except by imagin-
ing them Yankees with dark skin and
queer eyes. That is just what they are if
Yam Phou Lee is a fair sample. And, by
the way, mean no disrespect to the Chi
nese Of the laundrieS l have come across
able and likable men among their number
men who might become prominent in the
community ii it were not for the popular
prejudice against their race.
a* *
Can human being keep body and soul
together On $l.40 week?
That is Just what at least one sewing
woman in this city is trying to accomplish.
Out of this sum she has to pay 30 cents for
her little, room, under the roof of a tene-
ment block. Once week she has boiled
dinner costing her 20 cents at cheap
restaurant This lasts her two days The
rest of the week she eats bread and
molasses, or bread and tea, and little of
them. She boils the tea and warns her
self with the tiniest spark of fire that can
be managed. Col. Sellers candle was a
magnificent luxury in comparison. She
sewed overalls till late at night, by a
kerosene lamp, till her eyes We're nearly
ruined. A kind doctor relieved her: but
such life cannot long continue.
&##
This is only a sample. Two dollars a
week is the average earning of thousands of
women, who are sewing for sixteen to
twenty hours a day on wrappers, sheets,
overalls, and the like, sewing also the
shrouds which Tom Hoods imagination
discovered as the unseen counterpart of
their work. Thousands other, more fortu-
nate, make from $3 to S. week and man
age to keep the grim, gaunt wolves of hun
ger and sin farther from the door.
.*;:
The crowbait horses that drag orange and
strawberry carts about the city fare better
than these women. Yet the merchants
who employ them, and quote the terrible
law of supply and demand as justification
for putting their wages at the lowest num-
Der of cents for which starving people will
work-these devourers of women and chill
dren contribute to charitable associations
and funds with as gracious an air as though
they thought they heard the click of the
registering machine in heaven
s*s.
Says a well-known friend of the poor
proposed home for working
girls: '"There is the case of the poor girl
down here on a back street who worked
bending over her So week sewing, until
II O'Clock at night At she died. She
could have gone to this cheap boarding
house, diseased from toll and poverty. And
she might have gotten little benefit of the
contributions of these big merchants. But
1t would be the human and right thing for
them to pay their help SO they could live,
and thus prevent the necessity and NOR
tality at Once.'
Ut course the merchants don't see it in
that light They are "doing business on
business principles" They "must sell as
cheap as their rivals" The public will buy
at the lowest price
So the responsibility falls upon that vague
agent, the public. So long as the people |
buy of dealers who are notorious for their |
shrewdness in cutting wages, the evil will |
go on.
That it need not 60 OH is proved by the |
success of the labor organizations, who |
have made it almost impossible for employ |
srs to put skilled men on starvation wages |
n this city The deadly boycott has been |
Used to dc stroy the business of employers, |
who were treating their help well but not |
quite SO well as their neighbors, or who |
we're not sufficiently deferential to the labor |
ocie.ie
But the women have been left to fight |
heir cwn battle, and they have not fought it, |
rhe well-to-do women of the city could |
asily rescue these shaving sewing women.
They have only to come together and COM
nand the merchants to cease selling flesh |
md blood, and the merchants dare not
lisobey.